Figure 10.37: Polar Cloud printer management QUEUED display
The Polar Cloud maintains a print queue for each printer, allowing multiple members (those Polar Cloud members authorized to use that printer; see Section 9.2.3) to submit print jobs to a printer.
From the printer management screen, clicking on “QUEUED” will show a display of jobs on the print queue; see Figure 10.37. The printer dashboard screen also shows a display of jobs on the printer queue; see Figure 10.38. Note that Figure 10.37 and Figure 10.38 are both examples of what the owner or a manager of a printer, or any member of a group configured to have printer control of any shared printers, will see: namely all jobs in the print queue, including jobs submitted to the printer by other Polar Cloud members. But a Polar Cloud member who is allowed to use the printer but who is neither the owner nor a manager, (nor a member of a group configured to have control of shared printers), will only see his or her own jobs; see Figure 10.42 and Figure 10.43.
The printer owner and any other printer managers (or any group members with control access to a shared printer) can use the control buttons on the printer dashboard, such as the “START” button which initiates the actual execution of the first print job in the printer’s queue. Once a job is printing, control buttons appear to “CHANGE FILAMENT”, “COLD PAUSE”, “PAUSE”, or “STOP” the print job; these control buttons are active for the owner and managers (and group members with control access). In contrast, these job execution control buttons are not active for general (non-manager) users of the printer: when a non-manager user views the printer dashboard, the control buttons are all grayed-out, and in particular a non-manager user can neither initiate nor interrupt the printer’s current job. See Section 10.4.2 for further discussion of the printer dashboard control buttons.
The printer owner and managers may not only view all jobs in a printer’s queue, including jobs of other members, such managers may also modify any job in the queue, including jobs submitted by other members. In particular, a printer manager may delete any job from the print queue, or rearrange the order of all jobs in the queue, or merge any queued jobs. (Group members with “Control Printers” access may view all jobs in the queue, and may rearrange the order of all jobs in the queue.) A print job owner may modify their own print jobs. See Section 10.5.1 for details on modifying queued print jobs.
Note that the Polar Cloud also maintains a history list of what has been printed on the printer – thus the print queue’s entire history of jobs.8 From any of a printer’s “MANAGE” screens, such as the “QUEUED” screen shown in Figure 10.37 or Figure 10.42, clicking on the “HISTORY” tab will show the history of what has been printed on the printer; see Figure 9.28.
8A printer manager can see all print jobs submitted during the time(s) he or she was a printer manager, while a non-manager sees only his or her own print jobs. Note that if a Polar Cloud member has changed status regarding being a manager of a printer – such as in the case of a teacher who manages the printer during some semesters but not during others – then in addition to his or her own print jobs, the Polar Cloud member sees the print jobs submitted during the time(s) he or she was a manager but not the print jobs submitted by other members at other times.
